Dumbledore's Musings
by Lkjfdsa321
Summary: Dumbledore reflects on his thoughts at the end of each year. This is my attempt at how you can explain Dumbledore's actions throughout the book. This is canon compliant.


He was filled with regret as he stared at the hospital bed. This year had not gone the way that he wished it had. Young Harry was lucky to be alive. The Philosopher's stone hadn't brought anything but trouble since he became aware that it was the target of Lord Voldemort's plans.

It had all started when he had heard of rumors about a mysterious man enquiring about the stone. This hadn't worried him at the time, but he had decided to play it safe and talk to his old friend, Nicolas Flamel. He was shocked when he had found that his friend had been attacked twice already and that he and his wife had barely escaped with their lives. The latest attempt had been the worst of them all with Nicolas losing an arm and the mysterious man learning that the stone was hidden at Gringotts.

This information was troubling to say the least. He had investigated where the Flamel's lived and was able to pick up a hint of Lord Voldemort's magic, which confirmed his greatest fear that Lord Voldemort was still alive.

This information made the attacks even worse. With the stone Voldemort could theoretically make a body that made him even more powerful than before. He had immediately begun making plans to secure and hide the stone. The first problem that he faced was how to get the stone out of Gringotts. While the bank had formidable protections it had nothing that could stop a determined Lord Voldemort. Unfortunately in the last goblin rebellion wizards were forced to sign a treaty saying that they would not remove the stone from Gringotts. Such information was of course withheld from the public to help protect the stone.

The goblins would make sure that if there were an attempted brake in the stone would mysteriously disappear. They coveted the philosopher's stone as the greatest magical artifact ever made and had done everything in there power to gain control of the stone. This had led to the goblin rebellion that had only been stopped when Nicholas had agreed to let the goblins hold the stone as long as he had full access to it. Unfortunately he hadn't anticipated an event such as this. If there was a brake in he had no dount that the goblins would use it as an opportunity to steal the stone themselves.

This problem was difficult to overcome but after hours of going over the treaty he had been able to find a loophole that would allow him to remove the stone from Gringotts. It was actually a rather simple loophole. The contract stated that no wizard was allowed to remove the stone from Gringotts. This was easy to bypass by just having Hagrid, who is a half-giant, remove the stone. While this meant that Hagrid could legally take the stone it was still very likely that the goblins would kill Hagrid and take the stone for themselves rather than allow the stone to leave the halls of Gringotts.

This problem was more difficult to solve, but he was eventually able to come up with a plan that would protect Hagrid. He would send Hagrid with Harry Potter. This meant that if the goblins decided to illegally kill Hagrid they would have to get rid of any witnesses. In this case, if they killed Harry Potter in cold blood over a stone and it got out they would face a united wizarding world that would stop at nothing to avenge thier savior's death.

The next major problem that he faced was what to do with the stone once he had it. The stone was an extremely powerful magical artifact that a skilled witch or wizard would be able to sense. Only powerful wards would be able to hide its magical signature. This unfortunately eliminated the fidelius charm. While the charm was effective for hiding, most of the power in the spell went into hiding the location with only a weak obscuring ward actually hiding the place. This meant that anyone skilled in sensing magic would still be able to find the stone by triangulating the coordinates of the hidden location.

He was left with little options but to hide the stone at Hogwarts. There was no place in Great Brittan besides Gringotts and Hogwarts that would hide the stone's magical signature. Even still he was hesitant to hide the stone at Hogwarts. It could potentially cause Lord Voldemort to attack the school and might cause the children to be in danger. Unfortunately the stone would be safest at Hogwarts. After long discussions with the staff they had agreed that protecting the stone at Hogwarts was the right thing to do. The wards around Hogwarts would prevent harm from coming to the students from outside sources.

Still he wanted to add further protection to the stone besides just relying on the wards. This was harder than it sounds because he couldn't create any wards that Lord Voldemort wouldn't be able to get passed. Lord Voldemort had proved that in the last war when all of his protections failed to protect his order members. It was only when he discovered the fidelius that he was able to protect his people.

After extensive research he was able to find a ward that relied on a task to be completed. The easier the task was the more powerful the ward would be. The ward itself was used mostly in pyramids to protect an ancient Pharaoh's treasure, but could easily be adapted to suit his purposes. The hard part for this ward was balancing the task so that it was hard enough to slow Lord Voldemort down, but easy enough so that the ward just couldn't be broken down.

To decide on what tasks the wards should be set to he asked each of his most trusted professors to come up with tasks that could potentially stop Lord Voldemort. His guidelines for his professors were that the task must be doable, take as long as possible to complete, and set up so as to challenge Lord Voldemort. The last rule was added because Lord Voldemort could never turn down a challenge to his own superiority.

First was Hagrid, who came up with perhaps the most difficult task, get past a Cerberus. A Cerberus is an extremely powerful magical creature. They had magical resistant skin and were closely related to death. They were one of the few creatures the could survive a killing curse, others included the basilisk, the phoenix, some dragons, and the thestral. If that wasn't enough they also had extremely acidic blood and saliva that made almost all poisons useless against it. To further add to it's danger the creature was never truly asleep because only one head slept at a time. This made getting past a Cerberus a herculean task.

Next was Professor Sprout, she came up with the use of Devil's Snare. Devil's Snare is an extremely rare plant that is almost extinct. Devil's Snare is a plant that slowly encompasses a person than quickly tightens which makes it almost impossible to move, it then slowly continues to constrict until it crushes the person to death. To make the task even harder it is only briefly mentioned in the second year textbook. So unless a wizard was a specialist in herbology it was unlikely for them to realize what it was. The person was much more likely to mistake it for the more well known plant, the Creeping Constrictor. Creeping Constrictor is a plant that can only grow in complete darkness, but when exposed to fire grows rapidly and as the name suggests constricts what ever is in its vines.

Professor Flitwick designed the next challenge. His task was to catch the correct key using a broom and then unlock the door. While this may sound easy it was made harder by the fact that there were hundreds of nearly identical keys and only one could unlock the door. If you did catch the key the other keys would then attack you. This task was set up to take up the most time as possible. Lord Voldemort would be forced to try different keys over and over again before he would find the correct one.

Professor McGonagall created the next task. She decided to use a giant chess set that would force the intruder to win a game of chess to proceed. She transfigured some very impressive chess pieces and imbedded the defending side with her memories of chess. This made the pieces as good as McGonagall in chess. This challenge was the most straightforward challenge to Lore Voldemort. He would be unable to resist playing the game and showing that he was better than McGonagall.

Next was Professor Quirrell, who acquired two trained guard trolls. Trolls are one of the most physically powerful magical creatures and when you add in their extremely magical resistant hide they are a force to be reckoned with.

Professor Snape made the last challenge. It was in his opinion the most cleverly designed trap. The trap started with the exits being covered with extremely magical flames that could only be passed by taking a specific potion or through an extremely magically draining spell. Next was a simple logic puzzle, which told you which potion was the one that would allow you to go on. The genius of this task was that Lord Voldemort would be extremely cautious in drinking an unknown potion, especially one made by one of Severus's caliber. This would cause Voldemort to waste a significant portion of his magic forcing the flames to dissipate. He would then also have to deal with the Egyptian Ward since he didn't complete the task. This would further weaken Lord Voldemort.

Finally was the protection that he created himself. Using the Mirror of Erised to hide the stone was a stroke of genius if he says so himself. The mirror would make it so that only someone who wanted the stone, but not use it, would be able to retrieve it. This would prevent Lord Voldemort from getting the stone for a significant amount of time. Voldemort would more than likely eventually figure out how to get the stone, but it would probably take hours for him to figure out how to get passed the mirror. If that wasn't enough he also tasked Fawkes, his phoenix, to check on the traps every half hour. The days when Fawkes was having his burning day he tasked the teachers to check on the stone every hour.

His protection for the stone would have been flawless it Voldemort hadn't had an inside man. While he had his suspicions regarding Quirrell, he had only suspected the man because of circumstantial evidence. He had never imagined that Quirrell would work for Lord Voldemort, his suspicions were more that Quirrell had been tempted by unlimited wealth and immortality. He had unfortunately not wanted to ruin a fifteen-year friendship by accusing his friend of stealing the stone. That had been a terrible mistake that had almost led to the death of one of his students.

After Voldemort's attempt on the stone, he had a discussion with Nicolas on how to continue protecting the stone. After a long discussion they had decided that the stone was more trouble than it was worth. The earlier attempt had showed that he was unable to protect the stone and how it was likely that Voldemort would eventually get the stone. It that wasn't bad enough it was likely to cause the goblins to rebel soon if it wasn't given to them or destroyed. In the end, with a heavy heart, he had agreed to destroy the stone for his friend.

Harry moving about in the hospital bed brought him out of his thoughts. Good, he had expected the boy to wake up soon. Focusing his thought on Harry, he briefly reflected on how he felt about his actions. They were extremely foolish, but also incredibly brave. It was a good thing that the boy was so brave. He would need that bravery if he were to survive Lord Voldemort. With that last thought he focused on the matter at hand, explaining to Harry what had happened.


End file.
